8of8The birds along the greenway are some of the highlights.Photo: David Olinger

I spotted the sign beside the Brays Bayou trail, just west of Chimney Rock, soon after I moved to Houston a year ago.

It told me I could take the trail 6.5 miles northeast to Hermann Park or west about 7 miles to Arthur Storey Park.

Wow, I thought, Houston could hold a marathon on this trail with very few street crossings.

That wasn't all the sign said:

Brays Bayou starts near George Bush Park in West Houston and meanders eastward through south central Houston until it reaches the Houston Ship Channel. The bayou runs through or adjacent to several parks, including Hermann Park, MacGregor Park, Gragg Park and Mason Park. The trail connects 31 miles of uninterrupted, off-street, multi-use trails and greenspace from the Ship Channel to George Bush Park and the Addicks-Barker Reservoir.

Wow! Except for one thing. That description, and I'm putting this politely, is full of it.

At least until 2020.

The trail is not 31 miles long. Dead ends interrupt it. One section forks to a different, unmarked bayou featuring overturned shopping carts and gang graffiti on the sidewalk — until it dead-ends miles away from Arthur Storey Park. Other sections have been under reconstruction for at least a year.

I learned this the hard way. I set out to walk those 31 miles, one stretch at a time.

FOR A year, heavy equipment work has closed parts of the trail to Hermann Park. That I can accept.

But in the other direction, the trail simply stops at Kirkwood Road.

I tried walking west from Kirkwood and waded into knee-high weeds. I tried walking north on Kirkwood and found no trail. I drove up and down Kirkwood, searching in vain for Arthur Storey Park. Finally I consulted a map — and found the park about 2.5 miles northeast from the westbound Kirkwood dead end.

Arthur Storey Park, it turns out, is a lovely oasis beside the Sam Houston highway with a popular round-the-pond trail. It is not, however, connected by trail to either George Bush Park or south central Houston.

I tried walking toward Kirkwood or George Bush Park and gave up after traversing a mile of dried mud on the south side of the bayou.

Maintenance on the trail after rain events remains an issue.

Photo: David Olinger

I called the Houston Parks Board to explain my quixotic quest and register my frustration.

At last I got answers.

Chip Place, the board's managing director of capital programs, promised the confusing sign will be accurate — in about 3 years.

He said it was erected at the start of a giant renovation project that ultimately will give Houston 150 miles of trails along nine waterways — an urban trail system unlike any other in the United States.

Place likes to call it a "linear park system," because it offers amenities such as gardens, park benches and exercise facilities beside the trails.

"That was our first crack at a wayfaring sign," he said. "It got ahead of itself, let's put it that way."

As of today, however, the parks board is still acquiring a seven-mile stretch of land north and south of Arthur Storey Park. Place expects it will complete the purchase and finish the Bayou Greenways trail system on schedule in 2020.

Meanwhile, if you try to walk from, say, Arthur Storey Park to any other part of the Brays Bayou trail, "you can't get there right now," he said.

That littered stretch of trail at the west end? Actually, that's another bayou — Keegan's — he said. "That is not a Bayou Greenways trail," and therefore a city maintenance responsibility. Obviously, "it's been a bit of a challenge for those guys."

Brays Bayou actually forks north at South Gessner Drive, he said, and Keegan's borders the paved trail west to the dead end. (For the record, I also spotted overturned shopping carts and other debris in Brays Bayou near the Keegan's intersection.)

The Bayou Greenways project began after Houston voters overwhelmingly approved a bond issue in 2012 that awarded $100 million to build and beautify bayou trails, with an anticipated $120 million in matching funds to be raised by the board.

"It's really unprecedented," Place said. And "a lot of it does exist. We're well along the way."

SO I went back out to see how I missed the Brays Bayou fork. First, I found no sign to indicate that the paved path ahead led to a different bayou, nor that Brays Bayou turned there. I walked up Gessner, over the bayou bridge, and found myself traversing a narrow strip of concrete while cars and trucks whizzed by close enough to raise the hair on my right arm.

Be careful out there!

Photo: David Olinger

Finally I found where the trail resumed. I went back to move my car and park it in a safe place.

One challenge of this unique "linear park" system is finding a place to park. At Gessner, for example, the shopping areas display vehicle-towing signs all over the place. Usually I take my chances, hoping nobody will notice the guy in shorts and sunglasses who got out of his SUV, donned sunscreen and walked away from the shopping center.

This time I took refuge in the Episcopal Church lot. The church posted no warnings that the lot was restricted to praying customers only, and besides, it was Thursday.

It turns out that the Brays Bayou trail peters out about two-thirds of a mile from the fork on a quiet residential street. Ahead lay a quiet, beautiful bayou flowing through grassy, shaded banks and guarded by No Trespassing signs.

Sigh.

ASIDE FROM the interruptions, I enjoy many things about this long urban trail.

It's conveniently close to home. It grows fields of wildflowers, lipstick-pink crape myrtles, giant sunflowers and a surprising abundance of wildlife.

Near Stella Link, a pocket park displays a stunning variety of flowers and grasses native to prairies. All along the trail, stick-legged herons and egrets stand patiently in slow-moving waters, waiting for food to come to them. Schools of tiny fish swim upstream along with turtles, carp and large-mouth bass.

I once watched nine low-flying anhingas cruise the bayou in chevron formation.

Though I have not spotted snakes on this trail, a cyclist I met did. He suggested staying in mid-sidewalk to avoid the cottonmouths.

Along Keegan's Bayou, gang graffiti, piles of debris, overturned shopping carts, mattresses and months-old stretches of mud defile the western areas of portions of the paved trail, which runs through lower-income neighborhoods.

Not official Parks Board signage.

Photo: David Olinger

This stands in stunning contrast to maintenance levels along Houston's renovated Buffalo Bayou Park trail, where I watched workers sweep up bits of dirt that had spilled onto the sidewalk.

Despite all the undisturbed junk, I like that western stretch best. Beyond two highway underpasses, it turns surprisingly quiet. Concrete walls give way to grassy banks. Street crossings largely disappear, replaced by quirky intersections of nature and commerce.

Those overturned shopping carts in the water?

One has lain there long enough to grow vegetation and serve as a launch pad for diving birds.

A patch of fresh cucumbers grows down a rocky slope where someone left seeds. Twelve-foot-tall sunflowers and little morning glories grace the bayou side of a trail passing by industrial warehouse buildings and an RV park. Ivy vines climb underpasses, invisible to the millions of people who drive above.

As a former Colorado trail hiker, I also get a kick out of the warning signs near the underpasses. "Hill," they warn when the trail dips all of 5 feet.

Eight-foot height limit, others warn, as a trail limited to cyclists and pedestrians passes under highway entrance roads. Exactly what do they fear here? Stoned skateboarders crashing at the bottom of the "hill?" Kareem Abdul-Jabbar high-fiving on a unicycle as he approaches the underpass?

No matter. I'll take the good, the bad and the silly. And I'll keep watching.